How to cook and dance at the same time

This is a public service announcement: Don't grate cheese and boogie at the same time.

I've been hammering away for days at a tough editing project, so food has gotten kind of short shrift at the homestead (Sorry family). Last night we got takeout. Who knows what we ate the day before. My head has been lost in a thick jungle of words that haven't made a whole lot of sense, and I had been slashing away with my editorial machete until my arms hurt and I lost my sight to a wicked migraine. Finally, today, I saw some light through the trees and finished up a rough section.

In need of a little R&R, I decided to throw on some tunes while cleaning up the kitchen and preparing my favorite go-to pasta dish. Mike and the Boo weren't home yet, so I decided to listen to ABBA--a nostalgia trip (I grew up in Sweden) and an invitation to dance (and not a favorite of my music snob of a husband).

The first song to come up was I Have a Dream, so I start to sway and sing along. Memories of being eight or nine years old, spending the summer with my cousin Tove in Stockholm, and putting on shows for the family with her started to break over me like crashing waves: "I have a dream/a song to sing/To help me cope with anything/If you see the wonder of a fairy tale/You can take the future even if you fail/" Then, the song rises up to "I believe in angels/Something good in everything I see," and my throat chokes up and tears slide down my face, even as I continue to sway and empty the dishwasher. Song after song, it goes like this: I am crying, my throat is too constricted to sing and yet I continue to force the notes out, and I am wondering: What the hell? It's ABBA, for pete's sake. Why am I crying?

But the crying feels good. It has that weird and wonderful cathartic feeling that laughing at a funeral can have when everyone is remembering someone they loved very much, telling goofy stories, and soaking in gratitude for life and the people who are still there with you. It's pain and it's joy rolled into one rich and overwhelming package--like eating something that's sweet and savory at the same time.

Next song up is Gimme Gimme Gimme (a Man After Midnight), the dishes are done. Time to make the pasta. I shimmy over to where I keep the big pasta pot, pick it up, twirl back to the sink and start filling it with water, toss a handful of salt in. While the pot is filling I get some some high kicks (or maybe not so high) going while I holler my head off (of course the back door is wide open, so I am keeping my eyes peeled for the neighbors). I boogie back to the sink, put the pot on the stove to boil. I grab a spring onion, a bundle of asparagus, two carrots, some bacon, and what's left of a box of sweet peas from the fridge.

I slice the spring onion and the carrots; snap the ends off the asparagus and cut it into one-inch pieces; peel some garlic; cut the ends off the peas. The bacon slides from the package, and "Mamma Mia, here I go again/My, my, how can I resist you?/Mamma Mia, does it show again?/My, my, just how much I missed you." Oh bacon, how much I've missed you. I haven't had any since Saturday. I slice it thinly.

The tears have dried up, the sweat is starting to flow, the bacon goes into a hot pan to render and fry into crispy little bits. "If you change your mind, I'm the first in line/Honey I'm still free, take a chance on me/If you need me, let me know, gonna be around." The water is boiling away, a pound of butterflies is in for a dip. The bacon fat has rendered out, the spring onion slices are in the pan, changing the scent in the room. Molecules tickle my nose, my memory, the smell of my Finnish grandmother's kitchen (crazy as a bedbug, I believe, but I remember the mouth feel and taste of her bread, of green salad with some strange but delicious white salad dressing). Mostly, there's a memory of feeling whole, in the right place, family all around, Tove's dad trying to make us laugh and twirling his handlebar mustache, the bowl of salad being passed around the table. Cool Nordic summer light drifts through the window. I am crying again. It all comes from a time when I was little, before my family broke irrevocably, and little has been whole since. In go the carrots, the asparagus, and the peas.

I bring back Gimme Gimme Gimme (a Man After Midnight) and pull out all the stops now. I am dusting off what steps I remember from years of dance classes while the vegetables cook in the pan and the pasta boils. I am busting some serious moves, even though I don't remember my joints being this stiff when I did them before. I am going to hurt tomorrow. I grate the Parmigiano Reggiano while bopping around. Turns out to be a mistake when I slice some skin off my thumb. No blood in the cheese though, and that's what matters.

Pasta is down to about three minutes on the boil, I pour a cup of half and half into the pan with the vegetables and add a cup of grated cheese (more actually, but I always like extra cheese). The sauce thickens in minutes. In go thyme and white pepper. When the pasta is cooked, I strain it, add it to the sauce, and stir. Dinner's done. Mike and the Boo aren't home yet. They went to the park. So I keep on dancing until they get home, and it's time to eat.

Base recipe for go-to pasta (will make enough for at least two dinners, which is helpful if you have little time to cook):

• 1 lb dried pasta of any variety (butterflies and rotini are my usual picks) (cooked according to package directions--once again, when I make my own pasta, you will know about it)
• Any combination of vegetables that are in season and hold their shape pretty well (in summer, tomatoes and bell peppers are good; fall, I could go with cauliflower cut into bite-size pieces; spring, asparagus and peas are awesome)
• 4-5 slices of bacon (or more, if you like), sliced thinly (make sure to render it for the fat to the vegetables in)
• 2 cloves of garlic, crushed
• 1 cup half and half
• 1 cup grated Parmegiano Reggiano
• thyme, white pepper

Instructions (sans dancing)

• cook the pasta
• render the bacon and then let it get crispy
• add vegetables (start with firmer vegetables that take longer to cook) (keep stirring them)
• add the half and half and the cheese, season with thyme and white pepper (I don't usually add any salt because there is so much in the cheese and the bacon) and let it thicken
• strain the pasta
• add the pasta to the sauce and stir it on the heat
• You are done! (If you feel like it, you can toss some chopped walnuts, pine nuts, grated cheese, or other things on top, but you really don't need it.)

              

Seduced by the first spring vegetables at the farmer's market

Kandinsky didn't like green. In On the Spiritual in Art, he describes it this way:

"Passivity is the most characteristic quality of absolute green, a quality tainted by a suggestion of obese self-satisfaction. Thus, pure green is to the realm of color what the so-called bourgeoisie is to human society: it is an immobile, complacent element, limited in every respect. This green is like a fat, extremely healthy cow, lying motionless, fit only for chewing the cud, regarding the world with stupid, lackluster eyes. Green is the principal color of summer, when nature has outlived the year's time of storm and stress, the spring, and has sunk into self-contented repose." (Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, edited by Kenneth C. Lindsay and Peter Vergo, Da Capo Press, 1994, p. 183)

Clearly, Kandinsky never saw a Virginia spring after the leaves have filled in and before the dry heat of summer has cast its dusty, yellowing net. This green gathers sun to itself, transmuting it into a fiery halo that spreads its own light on the day. Not a contented cow chewing its cud, but a fierce green knight driving out the cold, gray ogre of winter.     

This potent green flashed in my eyes as I drove to the farmer's market, hoping that I might at last find some fresh vegetables and perhaps even some strawberries to dispel the doldrums of winter. And, happily enough, I did. Seduced by the offerings, I bought asparagus, spring onions, peas, fennel, and some ugly little purple carrots.

  

These may not be at the peak of their flavor, but they have the gift of newness, of being the first green foods to present themselves as miracles of sun and soil and rain. Now, what to do with them? Perhaps try one of Bittman's recipes for the asparagus? With the fresh Haskins bacon that I also purchased at the market? And what of the peas? A sweet addition to a nice pasta, perhaps? Or a stirfry? Perhaps a salad with the carrots?  And what of the fennel bulb? It's not a vegetable I am familiar with, but I am always excited to experiment, to try something new. The spring onions will of course add flavor to all these, and the green tops color. Most important is to have a light touch, to treat this lovely, fresh produce with gentle reverence, allowing their essential selves to sing.  

And what of strawberries, any luck there? Happily yes. Some bumpy, imperfect red beauties. These gems are too special to mess about with at all. Perhaps a few specks of sugar to bring out their flavor. Or even a tiny dusting of white pepper. Again, a light touch to allow their own true nature to shine.   

That's the beauty of real, fresh food, in season: You don't have to do much with it to make something extraordinary.  

Where are the spring goodies? I've waited, haven't I?

In May, two of the farmer's markets closest to me will be opening up again, and I can't wait. Hopefully I will finally get some of the goodies I have been waiting so anxiously for, in particular, asparagus and strawberries.  Mark Bittman just posted a chart of various methods of cooking asparagus with some delectable variations. (Actually the graphic posted with the article would make a great poster: Get on it, NYT.) I am anxious to try at least a few of those variations, especially steamed with brown butter (I mean, it's butter, c'mon) and, of course, roasted with bacon. (I could go on all day about bacon, but I will try to restrain myself. I mean, seriously though, bacon...oh yeah, I was going to restrain myself.) I've got another favorite recipe for asparagus that came from the April 2001 issue of Bon Appetit magazine that involves roasting the asparagus and serving it with crumbled goat cheese, crumbled bacon, some lemon zest, and a drizzle of olive oil. So good. (You can find a more detailed recipe here.)

And then, of course, strawberries will be coming in soon. I finally had to cave and buy some organic strawberries shipped all the way here from California to eat with breakfast tomorrow morning (yes, yes, yes, I have decided to be ridiculous / have some fun and try to have crumpets and tea with strawberries and clotted cream to celebrate the royal wedding). My son (four) and I shared a few before dinner, and they were good, but definitely missing that otherworldly, almost savory quality that local, roadside-stand strawberries have. They were pretty though and not too big. The best strawberries are always small. (In fact, those giant strawberries that you sometimes see in the grocery store are octaploids, which means they have eight sets of chromosomes. That's why they get so big, but they are never so tasty.)

While waiting for the spring deliciousness to become abundant at the supermarket, I continue to work on depleting my freezer and pantry. Today's experiment was with red quinoa, a grain that I have never tried before in any form, but I thought that Heidi Swanson of the blog 101 Cookbooks might have some guidance for me, and indeed she did. I found this recipe, which I decided to riff on using the ingredients that I had at home. Instead of asparagus and walnuts, I dug a small piece of pork tenderloin out of the freezer, defrosted it, sliced it as thin as I could and marinated it in a combination of soy sauce, honey, lemon juice, garlic, ginger, dried lemongrass, one piece of star anise, black pepper, and coriander (the last four or five ingredients were sort of tossed in there with an attitude like, well, that's kind of Asian-y, right? I am afraid I am not at all expert with Asian flavors). Then, while cooking the quinoa according to package directions (it takes little longer than the time it takes to cook parboiled rice), I sliced carrots into matchsticks and an onion into slivers, stir-fried the veg in a wok with just canola oil, put that aside and stir-fried the meat, and finally put it all together. I served the stir-fry with the quinoa as a replacement for rice, for which it served its purpose adequately. To be honest, the flavor of the quinoa was pretty nondescript to me, nearly as bland as parboiled rice. The smell of the quinoa was a bit stronger, almost greener (not entirely in a pleasant way), however the little snap of the grains between my teeth was pleasant and kind of addictive. I don't love it, but I will probably try it again.